1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to printers. Specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods for facilitating printing on various media, such as compact discs and paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printers are employed to print on various media types, including compact discs, boxes, signs, and so on. Such applications, however, often require expensive specialized printers designed to print on objects other than paper or transparencies.
Common household printers are typically adapted for printing on flexible media, and often incorporate bent paper paths to meet certain design constraints. For example, full-bleed (zero-margin) printing assemblies often require star wheels to help control the shape of the print media. Star wheel configurations typically require a bent paper path for optimal print quality. Consequently, such printers often cannot print on relatively rigid media, such as compact discs. Additionally, placing a bend in the paper reduces the risk of the print heads contacting the paper during high ink volume printing due to paper swelling (cockle growth).
To print on relatively rigid media, some inkjet printers are designed with a straight-through paper path, and employ a pen-to-paper spacing lever to accommodate thicker print media. Unfortunately, print quality is greatly reduced if a user forgets to re-adjust the lever to print on thin media, such as paper. Consequently, incorporation of manually controlled pen-to-paper spacing levers to facilitate printing on relatively thick and/or rigid media may result in increased calls to technical support and reduced overall user-satisfaction. Furthermore, compact discs pass through such printers via the paper path. Consequently, various guide rollers may sometimes unevenly translate the compact disc through the paper path, resulting in printing errors. In addition, star wheels may mark or smear printed surfaces of the compact disc, since compact disc surfaces are thicker and more susceptible to smearing and marking by star wheels than conventional paper.
Hence, a need exists in the art for an efficient system and method for facilitating printing on various media, such as compact discs, without requiring significant modification of conventional bent paper paths.